Modern Manners: Fashion Week Etiquette—Navigating the Front Row and Beyond

Hundreds of thousands of people, including models, journalists, retailers, celebrities, and executives, are expected to participate in the shows and festivities around the globe this season, and with so many people—and so many diverging agendas—Fashion Week can be a dense social thicket to negotiate. To help, here are ten Modern Manners tips for putting your best foot forward this season.

Until the early twentieth century, the predominant way people saw new clothes, especially the latest from Paris, was on dolls, beginning as far back as 1391, when Charles VI of France sent Queen Anne of England a “fashion doll” wearing the latest royal court dress. When World War I slowed the flow of style news from Paris, Edna Woolman Chase, then editor of Vogue, had the idea in 1914 to stage a “Fashion Fête,” in which the leading society women of the day, instead of dolls, modeled American, rather than French, clothing. Bing, bang, boom! And, here we are in the midst of New York Fashion Week 2012!

Hundreds of thousands of people, including models, journalists, retailers, celebrities, and executives, are expected to participate in the shows and festivities around the globe this season, and with so many people—and so many diverging agendas—Fashion Week can be a dense social thicket to negotiate. To help, here are ten Modern Manners tips for putting your best foot forward this season.

1. Do remember that despite any appearance to the contrary, we are invited guests at a fashion show. When we accept any invitation—this goes for a dinner or cocktail party as well—we are entering into a kind of social contract with our hosts to support them and their event. At fashion shows, this means to try and save your judgments for later, not during the show. Also, favor everyone who invites you to a show or party this week with a prompt and accurate reply. That means not saying yes if you’re not certain you can make it, or, if something truly urgent comes up after you have tendered an affirmative reply, reach out to your host as soon as possible. There is no excuse for an empty seat. Lastly, be punctual, and if the entrepreneurial you is going to shows only to “brand” yourself, that’s a lot like going to a party just to pose for pictures and not to participate. Rethink.

3. Do consider—if you are working an homage this season to Anna Piaggi—how the height of your hat will compromise the view of the person seated behind you.

4. Don’t chew gum, well, generally ever in public, but certainly not during the run of show. No one looks pretty chewing unless it’s a restaurant scene in a Baz Luhrmann film, and this is particularly true if you are (a) on-camera under the harsh show lights and (b) benefiting from any of the popular wrinkle-freezing agents. Here’s a tip: What doesn’t move when you chew gives it all away.

5. Do understand that despite any grave urgency you may feel at any particular moment—you’ve lost your phone, you’re late, you discover you don’t have a seat, security wants to do a routine check of your bag, you’re tired from last night’s whirl, or a show isn’t starting because some reality TV personality hasn’t arrived to her seat yet; whatever—losing it on someone else is always a no-no. Your emergency isn’t anyone else’s emergency. This also applies to the obsessed fashion blogger who comes uncomfortably close and must right-now-immediately-find-out . . . what? Usually it’s something absurd like what kind of underwear front-row editors are wearing today. Really?! Remember: You are under no obligation to answer any question you don’t want to answer. As at any circus, it is your host’s job to feed the tigers, not yours.

6. Don’t feel obliged to wear the clothing of the designer whose show you are attending unless you are a celebrity guest. If you are a celebrity guest, after you’ve accepted the largesse, travel, and other accommodations of the fashion house, this is no time for you to play “Rebel Without a Clue.” Put the frock on and get in the car.

7. Do know that the most polite thing you can say to the celebrity seated next to you is to thank them for their performance in their latest film/television show/tennis match/concert/Olympic diving, which you enjoyed so much. It isn’t the time to offer unsolicited comments or criticize aforementioned accomplishment, nor is it the venue to pry, discuss their alleged nemeses, or mention anything you read that morning in “Page Six.”

8. Don’t ever attempt to preclude anyone’s bodyguard from doing their job by asking them to sit or move. Like big clouds in a near peerless sky, they’re here for the duration. And, no, they don’t want you to try and make them smile.

9. Do avoid being the Debbie Downer in your pack who ruins fashion moments by saying know-it-all things like “You know, Saint Laurent did that look back in 1969” when you are the first (and perhaps only) person in your group to recognize the source inspiration for some dazzling number.

10. Don’t forget that the purpose of social media, especially Twitter, is for us to share useful information, not to tell everyone what we had for breakfast or to complain about crowded fashion shows, flight attendants, or the room service at one’s hotel. Although this goes less noticed during New York Fashion Week, where complaining about New York is intrinsic, it’s prematurely grand, quite immodest, and not really good at all for how the wider public perceives the fashion business when young Americans—otherwise hipper-than-thou—take to social media to bemoan the rain in London, the traffic in Milan, or the fact that the Ritz in Paris is closed for renovations when most everyone at home would give their iPhones to be there.

For more on modern manners and etiquette, follow William Norwich on Twitter @williamnorwich.